


Homecoming

by aurelie_saintjuste



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drabble, Fluff and Angst, Grimmauld Place, M/M, Post-Azkaban
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-01
Updated: 2017-12-01
Packaged: 2019-02-08 23:42:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12875562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurelie_saintjuste/pseuds/aurelie_saintjuste
Summary: Sirius returns to Grimmauld Place.





	Homecoming

Sirius Black wants desperately to reach out and close his trembling fingers around the white cotton collar of the man standing just out of reach in front of him.  He needs to prove that those amber eyes, tawny curls and scarred face are all real, that he truly exists.  Tentatively, hesitantly, his fingers reach out, but even as they do, Sirius stops, just short of the fraying neckline atop warm flesh. He’s terrified that should he make contact, Remus will slip away like the silvery mists of his best memories that he tried so desperately to protect from Azkaban’s ghostly guards. 

Sirius shudders on the momentary flash of rotting Dementor hands reaching towards him, between the bars of his cell.  It seems so long ago now, the night terrors and constant _ drip, drip, drip _ of his cell -- could it have possibly been just a few short weeks?

Grimmauld Place is Sirius’s prison now, confined in secrecy within the four walls and remnants of the life he did everything to break free from a lifetime ago.

The dust chokes him.  The curling and peeling hand-painted wallpaper creeps in on him and moulding velvet curtains threaten to hang him.

But this prison is different.  This prison carries a spark of promise that things could be righted.   _ He _ is there.  He, who unknowingly kept Sirius safe when he was a heartbeat away from death in a frozen cell.  The face that burned in his mind when his body was quaking with cold and terror now is just a footstep away from being cradled in his hands.  No illusion or memory of time, but perhaps a little grayer, a little more lined, a little more fraught than Sirius remembered him from a lifetime ago.  There is potential in this prison, potential which lies wholly in Remus Lupin’s scarred hands.

Sirius’s fingers find their target.  He feels Remus tense when his stiff fingers make contact with the soft, warm skin of the column of his throat.  He feels it: the staccato thudding of his pulse, Remus’s Adam’s apple jumping as he swallows down a decade’s worth of unsaid words, of doubt, of fear, of desire and of longing for his best friend, the only man he’s ever loved.

Remus doesn't blink when he locks his gaze with Sirius’s silver eyes.  He doesn’t accuse, doesn’t flinch, doesn’t seem to even breathe. 

Sirius closes the distance between them, wrapping his arms around Remus’s torso, his face buried in the juncture of Remus’s neck and shoulder.  

Remus says nothing for a long moment when the body wrapped around his shudders with all of those years worth of tears.  His hands hesitate for a moment, as if they’re trying to remember their favorite places on Sirius’s body, trying to slip back into the familiar patterns of intimate touch and feel.  Finally, one hand slips to the small of his back, the other settles at the base of his skull, long fingers lightly threaded in his black hair.

“Welcome home, Sirius.” 


End file.
